TASK 2b SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION

I ended up watching all of the videos out of interest, I found that they really showed how the small things that we use have such a massive impact on everything around us. The product life cycle is something that I really haven't thought about in my designs yet, but it something that I have realised really needs to be thought about because as designers we are the ones that are producing the things that do all the damage.
The two videos that i found very interesting were the ones on bottled water and electronics, the amount of materials that ares used in them and the harm that some of those materials can do is extremely worrying. Especially when you think of how companies "design for the dump", there is no thought that in many cases it would be better to change a certain part of a product instead of the whole thing. The issue that I found was the way that things are just thrown into landfill instead of being recycled or that companies tell their designers to use materials that cannot be recycled and thus are extremely toxic to people and the environment. There seems to be no thought about the damage that products cause and the only need is to make as much profits as possible, money is more important than the world and the people in it.
What I found after watching the films was that designers were smart enough and had the capacity to design well and smartly but they are stopped by the greed of companies, I feel that it isn't designers that are to be solely blamed for the issues associated with the production of products but it should also be placed on companies that don't seem to care. Like the video showed if we made the issue of disposing the products the companies issue they would very quickly change their attitudes to the production of products.
Companies need to be changed to care, to do that I see it as a joint need for designers in those companies to push to be better designers and also for the public to stop caving to what companies say but to tell companies what they want and how they want it done. If people dont demand something because of issues then companies will have to let their designers design smarter and more beneficially for the environment.